


Life in the Vivid Dream

by kitty_shcherbatskaya



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 01:25:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8557840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitty_shcherbatskaya/pseuds/kitty_shcherbatskaya
Summary: You've lost your immortality, and tonight is the first night of the rest of your life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hello yes am i meant to be learning Russian and also editing my multichap in a timely fashion? yes
> 
> am i doing either of those things? no
> 
> enjoy this lil one shot borne out of a sunday rebellion against homework, the fact that I will never let go of these characters and also because i am sexually frustrated. that 4 person dorm life in a profoundly homophobic country.
> 
> title from the song by Grimes

So, you think wearily to yourself, a major drawback of mortality is that you just got put on your back by a blackclad special forces agent twice your weight. And it hurts. 

“What the hell are you doing?” the man snaps at you, and you’re too busy sucking air back into your newly reawakened lungs to answer. He shakes his head and climbs off you, passing out of your peripheral vision to be replaced by blonde hair and Laura’s familiar, worried eyes. 

“Carmilla!” You straighten up and rub at your ribs, which have taken the brunt of your tumble. You wonder if, for the first time in over 3 centuries, it’ll leave a bruise. She grabs your hands and pulls you to your feet, into her.

“Ouch,” you murmur, “that’ll take some getting used to.”

“Please don’t try and fight the  _ Jagdkommando _ ,” she replies with a soft laugh in her voice, and brushes your hair from your eyes, “we only just got out of trouble without you adding more.”

You just look at her in the late morning sun, glorious, rich, and she’s glowing. “I’ll try,” you manage, and you have to pull her close, because none of this feels real - the pounding of your heart, the roaring in your ears, the sharp tug of your breath - and she’s all you have to hold onto. All you need to hold onto.

“Laura! Carmilla!” 

You twist in shock, and behind another squadron of kitted-out  _ Jagdkommando _ is the familiar, graceless, resolute figure of Sherman Hollis. Laura squeaks and leaps out of your arms to go to him; you fight the smile that is pulling across your cheeks. It  _ can’t  _ be relief that you’re feeling. More like tiredness at his barrelling approach.

“It’s over, dad,” Laura is saying with a beautiful, carefree laugh as she throws her arms around his broad shoulders, “we’ve done it.”

He breathes her in for a few long moments, and you’re jealous, jealous and also touched for them, recognising his grip on her as a mirror reflection of your own. “Apocalypse isn’t happening today then, hun?” His eyes meet yours over Laura’s shoulder; you nod softly.

“Not today.” Laura’s murmurs fade out of your dull hearing, and you move away to give them some privacy, before Sherman calls you back and pulls you into his arms too.

-o-

You’re in the back seat of his hire car, and Laura is staring out of the window next to you as the Austrian countryside rolls by. The radio has been stuck on static since the three of you left the ruins of the campus, an hour or so ago, and after gamely persisting for another twenty minutes or so, her dad flicks it off. 

Your ribs are hurting. It’s not the sharp, instantaneous pang of pain you’ve been able to feel and throw off again over the past 300 years. This is a dull ache, a sign of your body’s protests at its rough treatment, and your breath keeps catching every second at the reminder of it. 

You turn your hand over. It’s covered in little scratches and cuts from your climb out of the pit, and the nail of your middle finger is torn and ragged. The black polish is ruined. But you still seem to be the same: pale, delicate skin over slender limbs. A silvery scar on your wrist from when you’d burned yourself on your warming pan, 3 centuries and countless lifetimes ago. 

You run your fingers over it, grateful that not every little injury has scarred you since. You’d be monstrous; deformed beyond recognition by what else you’ve experienced, suffered. Inflicted.

Laura turns to face you, and smiles sleepily. You reach a hand out to her, and she undoes her seatbelt to slip over to the middle spot, choosing to rest against you. You glance nervously at her father, humming along to an ancient Scorpions tape he’d found in the glove compartment, and Laura squeezes your elbow. “It’s okay.”

So you lift your arm and let her slot into your side, where she belongs. She turns over the hand you were studying in between her fingers, and her thumb rubs softly over the nicks and lacerations there. “How are you feeling?” she asks softly.

You shrug. “There’s a lot of sensations going on at once. I’ll be fine.” She nods; her lip catches between white teeth. A part of you just wants to kiss her concern away, but there are times and places for that, and now you two have all the time in the world. “I’m not the one who died and came back to life last night,” you continue, quietly, out of her father’s earshot. 

Laura doesn’t respond for a second, but her fingers continue to play with yours. She no longer burns so hotly against your skin. She’s warm, though, and soft, and natural. And gentle. “I feel sort of - hollowed out. Tired, I guess, but it’s - it’s deeper than that. I don’t know.” she exhales, shakes her head in wonder. “I don’t understand it.

“Anyway,” she says softly, “you did too, really.”

“An improbable chain of events,” you muse.

You feel eyes on you both; on Laura, in your embrace. You lock gazes with her father in the rearview mirror. Then, he turns to the radio. A scratchy weather forecast for southern Styria pierces through the static; he whoops in triumph. You join the Autobahn heading towards Graz. Laura closes her eyes, and your breathing begins to fall in sync. 

-o-

When you wake up, it’s dark, and the tires of the car are crunching loudly on gravel. Laura isn’t leaning on you any more. You stumble out, your fragile muscles already seizing up from the exertion of the pit, and hesitate at the doorway. 

This is her world now. 

Sherman Hollis seizes your shoulder in one meaty palm and bundles you into his house.

It’s a world of new experiences. He stopped at a supermarket on the way and the enticing smell of cooking pasta and sauce sends a strange clench through your stomach. Sinking into an armchair with Laura next to you makes your limbs feel heavy, fuzzy, from a tiredness that human blood will no longer fix. 

And the soul of this old, rural farmhouse is pressing down on all sides of you - every glance, every sound, every breath is saturated with the lives lived here. Laura, her father, her childhood. So recent. So distant.

Laura is turning over a worn photo album in her hands. You don’t ask, and she doesn’t elaborate. But a pretty woman with honey coloured eyes and a baby in her arms smiles up at you.

-o-

You stand in the Hollis’ guest room in a pair of too-large pyjamas and wait as Laura’s father brings you extra blankets. He gives you a strange look as he piles sheets up on the bed, and you are powerless to give him what he seeks.

He pauses in the doorway. “So - you’re not a vampire anymore, huh?”

Your heart beats uncomfortably in your chest. “Not exactly.”

Sherman’s mouth works. “What does that mean for you - for Laura?”

“I don’t know.” You don’t. You’ve never been so uncertain about anything in your life.

He closes the door behind him, and you’re alone in the silence. The sounds you’re used to - of human footsteps, the tap of birds skitting across the roof, the wind rustling through the trees outside, Laura’s soft breathing - they’re lost to you now. A part of you wants to go to her. But you don’t know what the rules are here, you don’t know who she becomes here, you don’t know where you’re going to go next or what this has made of you all. And you’re tired. So you peel back the duvet and the comforter and clamber wearily into the cocoon of the queen bed.

You think that sleep evades you, but the dull thud of the door jerks you awake and you surface with panic and confusion at your own pitiful lack of awareness. 

“Carmilla.”

It’s Laura, Laura silhouetted in the greyscale twilight of the small room. She’s standing by the bed in an oversized T-shirt, and you let out the breath you’ve been holding. 

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s alright,” you say, too fast.

She gifts you a tiny smile. “I couldn’t sleep.”

You love her. You love her so much and you pull back the covers and let her slide in next to you, hold you, surround you. The white noise in your ears fades away.

“I think your dad put me in the guest room for a reason, sweetheart,” you murmur, and feel her smile against your neck. Her hand has found your heartbeat again. 

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she breathes back, and leans over to kiss you softly in the darkness.

Your hands glide chastely down her back, over her t-shirt, feeling her warmth and the strength of her body. It’s a kiss that’s deep, but gentle. Like home between her lips.

You catch your breath against her mouth. She’s smiling slightly, and rests her head on your chest, in her favourite place. Your hand tangles in her soft hair. 

“What are you going to do now?” she says softly, her hand drawing patterns above your navel.

“I haven’t thought about it,” you reply, because it’s true, because your life yawns open wide before you and it’s like looking into Nietzsche’s abyss, “the fact that there is a now beyond what happened this morning; I need to get used to that first.”

“Ok,” she says patiently, “what do you want to do? Where do you want to go?”

“Laura.” You trace the soft strong line of her bicep, taking a second to gather your thoughts. “I’ve seen the moon reflected on the salt plains of Bolivia. I’ve seen the northern lights over Iceland and midnight sun over the fjords in Norway. The mouth of hell in Turkmenistan. Ruins of Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Uluru in Australia. The Pyramids. I’ve… trekked over deserts, the Russian taiga. Climbed mountains. Laura, sweetheart, I don’t care. I’ve done it all. But I never - I never had anyone to just - just  _ be  _ with.” You feel yourself clutching her, feel the vulnerability catching in your throat. “Wherever you go - I’ll follow you.”

She doesn’t answer and you wonder if you’ve revealed too much. But then her voice hums against your chest. “I’m going to graduate, Carmilla. I’m getting a degree. I don’t know where, yet. But I will.” Her hand falls flat on your abdomen. “Will you come with me?”

You almost laugh, because it’s a ludicrous question after everything that’s happened. “Of course. Of course I will. But -” you take her chin and tilt her head to meet her eyes, “we’re going to Paris some day. We’re going to live in a little apartment and visit a boulangerie to get the freshest bread every morning. And we’re going to read Simone de Bouvoir and take pictures of each other and - I don’t know, hang it on the walls and call it art. Because I’ve only got one lifetime left, Laura -” it’s a strange feeling to say it, like it hasn’t quite sunk in yet, like it’s both too much and too straightforward all at once, “and it’s got to be the best it can be with you-”

She stops your words with a searing kiss. You fall into her. Her tongue is in your mouth, her hands clutching at the planes of your body, and you tighten your grip in her hair and at her hip and let her surround you.

You know, with sudden clarity, what’s going to happen tonight. The only thought you can summon is that you hope her father has grown out of the habit of checking on his daughter in the night.

Her hands come down and tug, insistent, at the hem of your shirt, and you loosen your grip on her to let her tug it off and over your head. You need her lips back on you. She obliges. Laura is taking control and you’re happy to let her, because you haven’t once felt like this in the last three hundred years and you never want her to stop touching you. 

Her kisses on your neck send heat straight to your core, and you pull her closer to you, on top of you. Her hand finds its way to your breast, and she stops for a second, listening to the racing beneath your ribcage. Your breathing is loud in the silent room. “Your heart,” she breathes, “it’s pounding.” 

“You think it’s strange for you?” you laugh breathlessly, “try having it in you after all this time.”

She smiles brilliantly and kisses your lips again, slowly massaging the swell of your breast, brushing your nipple, and it feels so good. Your mind hums, finally quiet, finally at peace.

You slip your hands under her shirt, pulling it up, needing her skin against yours. It’s discarded by the side of the bed. She bites gently on your lip, and you let out a needy noise at the sensation. Then, her lips descend to your chest, your collarbone, and she sucks on the white skin until it’s red and tender. The marks will stay this time, you know, and the realisation sends another hot flash of arousal through your body. 

“Laura..” you murmur her name, and push blonde strands back from her face, needing to see her. She meets your eyes as her questing mouth finds your nipple, and you gasp as she sucks, hotly, needily. Your thighs are already clenching around her hips. Her fingers are tracing the delicate skin at your hipbones, and she’s pushing the pajama pants down. They come off easily. They were too big anyway. She finds your other nipple, gives it the same treatment, and everything is so vivid, so real. You're aflame under her lips. 

She lets go of the sensitive flesh with a soft, final tug. You’re so ready for her. She smiles at you, and you wonder what she’s thinking. 

“Are we gonna...” her mouth is hesitating, so bashful about the words she wants to say, no matter how skillfully it was handling your chest just moments before.

“God, please,” you murmur. “But what about your dad?”

She drops a soft kiss on your sternum, between your breasts. “He goes to bed every night at 11:30 and sleeps like a log. He’s not gonna know.”

“You’ve done this before,” you realise, the image making you jealous, and the jealousy only arousing you more.

She smirks. “I don’t think that’s really relevant right now, do you?”

You don’t really want to know. You stroke the soft skin between her shoulderblades, feeling the muscle shift beneath. She’s stronger than you now. You resolve to change that, eventually, because you already miss the power that used to settle so easily in your bones. But for now, you can enjoy it. You tug her up and kiss her lips, and your hands find the waistband of her underwear and pull it jerkily down, until she balances over you and kicks it off her ankles. There’s no more barriers between you. 

But she won’t let you kiss her long; she slips down your body and continues the work she’d been doing before, leaving a soft trail of kisses from the base of your breasts to your navel. Her tongue dips in for a second, wet and warm, and your back arches from the bed in the most torturous anticipation of where she’s going to reach next. 

She rocks back on her haunches, settling between your thighs, and just looks at you. You’re sweating, you realise, and your breathing is laboured. You reach for her, and she takes your hand out of the air. “God - I love your body,” she whispers, reverent.

It’s not the first time someone has said that to you, and you never believed them. Your skin is too pale, your hips too broad, your breasts too small and your nose too sharp. And there are scars on you, three hundred years of struggle and the ugliest of battles. But the way she’s looking at you - the way you know that it’s not just your body she loves, but  _ you, you, you _ \- it doesn’t matter any more. What she sees, she adores. Your fingers are tangled; she brushes your damp hair out of your eyes. 

You beg again, because there’s a lifetime before you, a time and a place for staring into her shadowed face, but that isn’t now. “Please, Laura.” 

She wastes no more time. Her teeth and tongue, nipping and sucking on the bones jutting from your hips. A hand, coming up to knead firmly at your breasts. And the fingers of the other, finally, brushing at your centre, at the soft, slick flesh there. Your breath is shaky, and it’s the best kind of torture. 

She draws small circles, and you’re already beside yourself. Then the fingers are gone, replaced by the hot pressure of her mouth, and you let out a keening moan. You feel her smile against you, and you can’t help but smile yourself, over the embarrassment, over the mess she’s making of you. You scratch at her scalp, murmuring words you’re not even sure she’ll hear. “Like that, baby…”

She goes slow, slow and sure, relearning every part of your body, because you know she’s done all of it before but never like this - never without the threat of parting, of a violent and painful end bigger than either of your bodies and either of your desires. It’s like you’re both sinking into the sheets and the night and the peace; a peace that is here and now and  _ yours _ and will not be seized from you again.

Her tongue is dipping and curling inside of you, an arm wrapped authoritatively around your thigh, and you’re not sure you can take it any more. You’ve never been a fast climaxer, and her touch feels incredible but right now it’s not enough, and frustrated tears leak from your screwed up eyes as the heat builds and builds, and you need more of her. Her hand leaves your nipple to hold you down at the pelvis, and you strain against the weight.

Then her fingers are inside, and your thoughts stop. She sets a slow rhythm, slow and thorough, exactly how she knows you like it, and her tongue is still laving wide, firm strokes at your clitoris, and you’ve been with countless lovers in your long long life, but none has ever given you such dedication, such reverence, as Laura right now. She moves easily inside you, where it’s slick and grasping for her; the praise you know she likes slips out from your mouth. “Good girl, just there -” Your hips rock to the rhythm of her thrusts. Her touch, her breath, her head bobbing between your bent legs - it’s filling you up, hollowing you out, expanding to be your entire world.

Still, you need to peak, and she’s showing no signs of tiring, but it’s almost more than you can take, tired and overwhelmed and in love. You buck impatiently, searching the contact, and you know she understands, because a third finger slips in you and suddenly she’s speeding up, crooking her fingers against the spot she knows best and every time she does you almost black out. You’re making it. You’re getting there. It’s blossoming, blooming behind her fingers, below your navel, but the sweat is pouring from you and your breath is almost out, and you panic at the staccato beat, furious and urgent in your chest, like it will no longer be contained - 

“Laura - I can’t -” you’re losing the ability to think, it’s too much at once, tears are leaking from your eyes and your  _ heart,  _ it’s  _ screaming,  _ “baby, my -  _ mein Herz, Schatz, es schlägt  _ -” the fear tightens your throat; you barely manage to spit out your words. 

She freezes inside you, and you teeter on the edge, barely knowing up from down. The racing of your heart is a hammer blow against your ribcage, painful and frantic.

“Carmilla.” She’s pulled out of you; she seizes the arm over your face and presses your hand against her chest. “Listen. Carmilla, listen. Mine is too. Carmilla. Count them.”

Her heart is fluttering against your fingertips, and you suck in breaths as you count, calling the numbers aloud. Then, she places her hand against you, finding the beat. “It’s the same, Carm. You’re okay. I’ve got you. Trust me, okay?” you meet her eyes, dark in the shadows of the room. “Trust me.”

Her eyes not leaving yours, she lets go of your chest, and traces back down to where she left off. She enters you firmly, calmly, again. Your breath hitches; your heart rate spikes through the roof. “Breathe, baby,” she murmurs, “just breathe.”

You lean up and connect her lips to yours, needing her, and she kisses you back deeply, languidly, as she sets her pace again inside you, her thumb drawing patterns on you again. You do trust her, and you’ll trust her forever. 

Finally, her touch sets you free. Your orgasm crests and peaks around you, and you come with her name on your lips. It’s the only way, you think hazily, that you ever want to come again.

She lets you ride it out on her hand, until it’s too much and you clench your thighs around her with a broken noise of submission. Then she kisses you chastely and wraps her arms around your abdomen, settling against you as you catch your breath. 

“Was it too much?” she asks worriedly as your chest heaves and your vision clears. “I just - it’s hard to remember the whole heart thing is kind of a new gig for you-”

You’d be more mortified, except she’s so incredibly  _ floundering  _ right now, and you can’t help but smile. “It was… intense.” It takes you a second to find your voice again, rough and shaky in your throat, and even then you hesitate. “I’ve never… I was only 18 when I was turned. And it was a different age. I’ve never felt that as a human before.” 

She smirks. “Did I just technically take your human virginity?”

You can’t help but roll your eyes. “If it makes you feel good, then yes, I suppose you did.”

“You loved it.” 

“I don’t know what gave you that impression.” 

She giggles, and kisses you. “Virginity is a patriarchal construct anyway.”

When she tries to pull away, you stop her, pulling her lips back to yours, tangling a hand in her hair, the other pulling possessively at her hip. You’re awake now, and you want her. 

She wants you too; you feel her grinding against your hips, and you lift your thigh to give her friction, a hand moving to the mound of her breast, your teeth nipping at her lip. They aren’t sharp points. You don’t have to handle her like she’s made of glass, like your touch can ruin her. 

Maybe it still can. But not like that any more. 

She moans against you; your hand finds the swell of her ass, and every part of her is an aphrodisiac. You know what you want. You tug her forwards, and she shifts on top of you, and you keep pulling, insistent, and she looks at you confused until her eyes widen and her mouth falls open in an  _ o  _ of surprise. 

Then, carefully, she swings her hips to either side of your head and sits tentatively on your chest. You can feel her arousal, hot and slick on your naked skin, and you want to taste her.  “Are you sure?” she asks, stroking your hair again. She loves your hair, and you love her fingers in it. “I don’t want you to go too hard -”

“Laura,” you growl, wrapping both hands possessively around her waist, just above her hips, so close to you, “am I going to have to ask you to sit on my face?”

You see her blush, her guileless smile, and she lifts herself up and leans over, and your lips and tongue immediately find what they’ve been looking for. She gasps; a hand clutches at your scalp.

It’s a new technique, having to breathe, you soon discover, as she coats your nose and lips and chin. Her hips are grinding against you, her breath is leaving her body in shuddering gasps as she grips the headboard behind you, and even with your tongue buried deep inside of her you have to tear your lips from her to remember that your lungs are demanding air. 

But you find a rhythm - she rocks, pivoting on your tongue, and you focus on her shivers and her moans, and you’re jolted by the unexpected memory. The reverence and the ritual, the beauty and the ecstasy before a gilded altar in the Karnstein chapel, magnified by a thousand in the grandeur of the Gothic cathedral in Graz. You’d believed then in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; you’d believed fervently, wholeheartedly. But God had never given you the answers you’d needed. And now, with Laura’s voice like a Latin incantation in the dusky room, with your lips wrapped around her and your hand gripping her thigh, hard, it’s like she’s joining you in prayer - the only prayer that has ever mattered. You’re worshipping her body and her vitality, just as she’s worshipping yours.

You’ve never felt so alive. It’s like she’s bringing you to life, with every rock, with every moan of primal pleasure. Your heart is hammering again; your breath is frantic and desperate; you want her wrapped around you forever.

You feel the powerful muscles in her thighs begin to clench and flex, and you know that she’s close as her hand pulls painfully at your hair; it’s glorious. You slip a finger into her as you wrap your lips around her sensitive clit. You suck, hard, and you crook your finger, and her voice breaks as she lets out a stream of curses, curses that she usually never uses, and she floods your mouth with a final, racking sob of satisfaction.

Laura flops forward, holding herself up by the headboard, and shuffles backwards to sit heavily on your chest. You run your hands up her sides, leaning forwards to kiss the flexing muscle of her abdomen. 

“God, Carm,” she manages, and you let yourself feel smug at how shattered she is. You pull her down to you. She kisses you open-mouthed, and you taste both yourself and her on your tongues. Your hands intertwine again, chastely, by your sides and your legs come together among the twisted mess of bed linen. You couldn’t be any closer to each other.  

“I really hope my dad didn’t hear that,” she mutters sleepily.

“Nothing for it now,” you tease, “he’ll be in here with his bear spray in a minute, trying to stop me deflowering his daughter.”

“Whatever,” she’s listening again to the rhythm of your heart, sending life through your veins, “at least I didn’t think I was  _ dying  _ because of what you were doing with your mouth.”

“Don’t get cocky,” you reply evenly, hiding the smile threatening to tug at your cheeks. “You’re going to have to give me time to get used to it. It’s a big change after three hundred years as a creature of the night.”

“You’ll always be a creature of the night,” she snorts, and she has a point. She’s tracing patterns on the taut canvas of your stomach again. 

“I love you, you know.” You say it abruptly, almost too loudly, and her fingers pause on a scar where your hip meets your abdomen. “I didn’t say it enough, before.”

“You didn’t have to,” she finds her voice, quiet and somehow profound in the suspended sanctuary of the bed, “I always knew, I think. You love with your whole heart, Carm. It’s - it’s amazing. Even after all this time.”

You don’t have anything to say to that. The truth is, you hadn’t known that before her. It was a terrifying realisation. A part of it still is.

“And I love you too,” she breathes, “more than I ever knew I could feel for anyone,” and perhaps it’s not so vast, so overwhelming, as long as she’s with you. You kiss her temple, because there are no words in any language that could possibly articulate that sensation, that relief. “Guess we’re stuck with each other, now, huh?” she jokes feebly, and you close your eyes, because if she wasn’t  _ her _ , she’d be profoundly ruining the moment.

“God, I hope so,” you say, honestly. 

She plays with your fingers. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading guys, hope that wasn't too fucking abominable.
> 
> head over to viele-kleine-leute.tumblr.com if u fancy. it's aesthetic and gay but send me prompts! or obscure furniture facts! mix it up.
> 
> also, fuck donald trump amirite


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